[Illustration:  Jens Baggesen.]

Baggesen was the son of poor people, and strangers helped him to his scientific education.  When his first works were recognized he became the friend and protege of the Duke of Augustenborg, who provided him with the means for an extended journey through the Continent, during which he met the greatest men of his time.  The Duke of Augustenborg meanwhile secured him several positions, which could not hold him for any length of time, nor keep him at home in Denmark.  He went abroad a second time to study pedagogics, literature, and philosophy, came home again, wandered forth once more, returned a widower, was for some time director of the National Theatre in Copenhagen; but found no rest, married again, and in 1800 went to France to live.  Eleven years later he was professor in Kiel, returning thence to Copenhagen, where meanwhile his fame had been eclipsed by the genius of Oehlenschlaeger.  Secure in the knowledge of his powers, Oehlenschlaeger had carelessly published two or three dramatic poems not worthy of his pen, and Baggesen entered on a violent controversy with him in which he stood practically by himself against the entire reading public, whose sympathies were with Oehlenschlaeger.  Alone and misunderstood, restless and unhappy, he left Denmark in 1820, never to return.  Six years later he died, longing to see his country again, but unable to reach it.

His first poetry was published in 1785, a volume of ‘Comic Tales,’ which made its mark at once.  The following year appeared in quick succession satires, rhymed epistles, and elegies, which, adding to his fame, added also to the purposeless ferment and unrest which had taken possession of him.  He considered tragedy his proper field, yet had allowed himself to appear as humorist and satirist.

When the great historic events of the time took place, and over-threw all existing conditions, this inner restlessness drove him to and fro without purpose or will.  One day he was enthusiastic over Voss’s idyls, the next he was carried away by Robespierre’s wildest speeches.  One year he adopted Kant’s Christian name Immanuel in transport over his works, the next he called the great philosopher “an empty nut, and moreover hard to crack.”  The romanticism in Denmark as well as in Germany reduced him to a state of utter confusion; but in spite of this he continued a child of the old order, which was already doomed.  And with all his unrest and discord he remained nevertheless the champion of “form,” “the poet of the graces,” as he has been called.